


Shut Those Books and Join the Army

by Phaes



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:45:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phaes/pseuds/Phaes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An assortment of answered tumblr prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain." - Wyoming/CT? :D
> 
> \- Reeberry

A lifetime and more passes before they meet again.

They have aged, both of them. CT is no longer the vibrant soldier she once was, but a scarred remnant of a time from when she once had passion, a puppet left scrabbling in the sand for relics.

And it is in the sandy dunes where they meet again, CT fortified in her pitted metal walls of brown armor and Wyoming in his of glossy white; old relics from a lost world. She reminds him of what they could have been – he reminds her of what they once were.

He disgusts her.

She overwhelms him.

And they are both so _lonely_.

They fuck on a bed of memories, gritty dust of fallen comrades clinging to their sweat streaked skin. He pretends she might love him, she pretends she can still love. But she’s used up all her love and all that’s left is this desperate thing that claws, and bites, and screams into the nights, going on and on until nothing is left and everything has been spent. And then she wakes up to do it all again, striding into the future to win the battle against the past.

He envies her, her and her burning resolve, the fire of passion within her that hisses and spits, and like a moth to a flame, he is drawn. And like a forest fire she destroys him.

She hates him. But for moments she can pretend doesn’t, that he isn’t the embodiment of all that is wrong, all that she rallies against, that he isn’t who he is but rather someone else – anyone else.

But the illusions never last and eventually it shatters, the shards of pretense ground into dust underneath their steel feet and the sickness of their reality.

They part on empty terms, a Russian roulette of differences that results in his flight for his cool green and her for her relics in the sand.

(he might love her, but she, she _abhors_ him)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What if the 'do you ever wonder why we're here' line makes a comeback in season 10?
> 
> -Roosterchat

Grif stared at the figure beside him, gently running one frankensteinian hand over the bloodied face.

‘Hey Sarge,’ he said, gently closing Simmons’ eyes, ‘do you ever wonder why we’re here?’


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the theory that OCD!Grif has some basis in canon. (You know the Grif's have a heartwrenching backstory)

Grif sees it lying on the floor as he counts his money in the dilapidated store.

 _A clean home,_ it proclaims, a smudge of dirt eclipsing the woman’s white smile, _is a happy home._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything you say to me / Takes me one step closer to the edge / And I’m about to break / I need a little room to breathe / Cause I’m one step closer to the edge / I’m about to break - Maine? Wash?
> 
> \- Satoru-13

Something had gone horribly wrong and Maine could not find the words to scream for help. Air struggled past lumps of tar that disfigured the interior of his throat and soft, huffing growls filled the rec room. At the questioning glances from the other freelancers Sigma had smiled down at him benevolently and given a small laugh.

“Agent Maine is simply thinking aloud.” He explained, holographic hand resting lightly on Maine’s head, and the other freelancers took this in stride – accepting it as fact. After all, Sigma had a direct connection to Maine’s brain; He was sure to be an accurate translator for Maine’s now abbreviated speech.

A translator that Maine had no way of contending; more and more the freelancers had started talking _at_ him – no longer to him, _with_ him – taking Sigma’s word for truth as Maine slowly became a part of the backdrop.

It was as if he were a _child._ Some sort of _pet._

Trapped in his own mind, he still (naively) held onto the hope that someone would notice something was wrong.

The rasp of air over mangled vocal chords once more came out as a growl as Maine futilely attempted to speak, to communicate, to _exist_.

_Help me._

“Woah boy,” York laughed, “keep growling like that and we’ll need to put a leash on him, eh Sigma?”

Sigma smiled benignly from where he hovered over Maine’s shoulder, flames casting a glow that flickered over the furrows of scar tissue that mutilated Maine’s neck.  

“Don’t worry Agent York.”

_Please._

“I‘ve got full control over him.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "People will show you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be." Director/Tex (any iteration of either/both of them) 
> 
> \- Reeberry

When there is no time for waiting or stopping or just being the Director still finds time to dig his graves.

He digs them in his spare time, his work time, his only time, in all of his time time time. He digs them when they’re needed and when they’re not. He digs them before death becomes even a thought.

He digs graves out of relationships and soldiers, robots and fools, and in each one buries a piece of himself.

_Epsilon_

_Theta_

_Sigma_

_Omega_

_Delta_

_Gamma_

_Alpha_

_Allison._

He digs graves out of people and builds their coffins with paperwork, nailed together with empty words and dripping ink.

Lost in space, Allison’s body will never have a grave. So he digs one and pretends she lies waiting inside the empty plot, streams of code serving as her final resting place.

“Agent Texas.”

“You are dismissed.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “but birds can fly so high/and they can shit on your head yeah/they can almost fly into your eye/and make you feel so scared/but when you look at them/and you see that they’re beautiful/that’s how I feel about you” - Wyoming/CT :D
> 
> \- Reeberry

He likes her in that vague sort of way that children love rivers and ponds, mud and muck, and toads and frogs. Something fun to poke and prod, to laugh at and watch as it jiggled and trembled – something that terrifies you as you lie in your bed wondering whether something had been looking back at you as you stared into the murky depths.

Insomniac ponderings that are always dismissed in the morning as sleep is rubbed from the eyes and reason once more takes hold.

And that’s how it was supposed to be, Wyoming laughing and prodding as C.T. simmered and stewed (and terrified Wyoming with the force of her emotions) and that’s all it ever was supposed to be. Two planets that revolved around the dying star of Project Freelancer, occasionally casting shadows over the other – but never close enough for touch.

Wyoming figures his head on her knees counts as touching.

The thing about midnight ponderings is that they're not meant to come true, but as Wyoming feels his blood drain out of him with every rattling breath and shuddering thump of his heart he finally, truly, looks into the murky pools of C.T.’s eyes.

And something looks back.


	7. Chapter 7

Wyoming had never thought himself to be a naive individual, but as he stands before the object of his obsessions for  years he cannot help but feel disappointed. Let down.

Betrayed.

His reaction is irrational, illogical, a feeling like that of a child who has discovered that their parents are not the benevolent, infallible individuals as once thought, but rather fallible, mistake ridden illusions.

Even with this revelation the desire to impress, to idolise, still remains.

It had been a surprisingly difficult finding C.T. but he never gave up, letting his obsession dictate his decisions, his jobs, even his relationships. All of it, seemingly worth it at the time.

It takes him months, years, timelines, before he finally stands before her in the sandy wasteland. Her in her armour, and him in his. _Look at me_ _,_ he wants to shout, _I found you, I did it! Do you not see, I can be just as dedicated, just as passionate. It was me. Not Washington, not the Director, **me.**_

“Agent Connecticut.”

And as he stands jubilant before her, radiating smug pride over discovering her she looks at him and frowns.

And he finally looks at her.

Worn, dirty and small is the first thing he sees. Empty is the second.

The passion that had driven her (and had driven him to her) is all gone leaving this hardened individual behind, this sullen little thing made up of sharp angles and grit. A mockery of what she once was.

And she looks at him as though _he_ has failed _her_ _._ Still the same, still dressed in his shiny shiny white, still the smiling assassin, the money whore, a cockroach that has survived unchanged in the nuclear times.

This is what he had striven for, this meeting, with this person, for years and years and more than one of his lifetimes - _this._

Needless to say, it fails to live up to expectations.

“Wyoming.”

Flat, bare, _fake_.

“Out of all the things to make it out of the Project intact, of course it would be you.”

He leaves and takes the first job that will get him as far away from the desolate arena and it’s barren inhabitant as possible. The person he had been pursuing is dead.


End file.
